The Increase in Smoking in Poorer Countries

Smoking is on the increase in several low income and middle income countries according to this World Health Organisation data, published in the World Bank’s recent review of 2016

According to the World Health Organisation up to 80% of the world’s tobacco users now live in low and middle income countries, with younger people especially taking up smoking in increasing numbers.

Why is Smoking Increasing in Poorer Countries?

In Short, it seems that since governments in developed countries have made it more difficult for tobacco companies to kill people in rich countries, they’ve now moved on to trying to kill people in poor countries instead.

The latest evidence shows that tobacco industry marketing remains a significant global problem, particularly for people in the poorest countries who are the most exposed to it. Our study examined tobacco marketing in 16 countries.

In communities in low-income countries, 81 times more tobacco adverts were observed than in high-income countries.

People in lower-income countries were 46 times more likely to hear radio adverts, 11 times more likely to see poster adverts and nine times more likely to see television adverts than those living in high-income countries.

Access to tobacco was also higher in poorer countries. In low-income countries, we observed two and a half times more stores selling tobacco in the communities in the low-income and lower-middle-income countries than in the high-income countries. Worryingly, 64% of stores visited sold single cigarettes compared with just 2.8% in high-income countries.

This high level of marketing in poorer countries is consistent with the tobacco industry’s targeting of these countries. They are key to the industry’s future. In the west, the tobacco industry’s profits continue to increase despite the decline in smoking rates , but it is unclear how long this pricing power will hold out in the face of growing regulations.

How to Reduce Smoking in the Developing World?

The World Health Organisation notes that there are several things that effectively reduce the use of tobacco consumption:

Banning positive advertising for cigarettes, although there are only total bans in 29 countries worldwide.

Taxation – a 10% increase in the price reduces smoking by 5% in low income countries.

NB – A further challenge here is tackling Organised Crime – and their role in smuggling tax-free cigarettes, which can subvert national taxation policies.

This is a useful little data-case-study for lots of reasons

It’s a good example of the negative role TNCs play in development

It’s a good example of a critique of neoliberalism – it seems that regulation by the government – of advertising and through taxes for example – can really help reduce smoking.

This kind of reminds me of ‘Runaway World’ – we know what works to reduce smoking, but what with both TNCs and Organised crime having so much to gain financially from cigarettes, it seems unlikely that governments are going to get a handle on this problem any time soon!

Finally this is also a slap in the face to ethnocentrism – You (I did until today!) were probably under the impression that smoking’s on the decline – well it may be in the UK – but looked at globally it’s not.